


The Ones Waiting Behind

by helloherearemystories



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 21:29:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14173788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloherearemystories/pseuds/helloherearemystories
Summary: May Parker loves Peter Parker like a son. Her perspective as she waits for Peter to return from Infinity War.





	The Ones Waiting Behind

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction ever!! This is my first time posting anything so I'm kind of excited. Hope you enjoy!

Peter is gone. She tried to stop it. Tried to shield him from this cruel, evil world that he still had faith in. But she couldn’t. It didn’t matter that she had demanded him to stay, ordered him not to move. It didn’t matter that she had screamed and cried, you’re all I have left. It hadn’t even mattered when she had begged and pleaded until her words were indiscernible, just broken sobs and pure fear. 

He had hugged her. Wrapped her arms around her gently, and she pulled him tight, squeezing with all of her strength, as if to stop him from moving, to keep him rooted to the ground, if she just never let go he would stay.

But then he had slowly peeled himself away without so much as a struggle, even though her arms shook and her hands broke their hold on each other. A quick I’m sorry and he was gone. When she followed him to the window, screaming his name, he was already down the street. A red and blue suit that she could hardly see anymore.

It seemed odd, she thought. When she had first met Peter as a 20-year-old about to graduate college, about to start her life, about to get married, about to explore the world with her new husband, she had never thought he would grow to become such a large part of her life. She had always been fond of him, always enjoyed babysitting him and playing with him at family functions. But he hadn’t been hers. He had been Mary’s and Richard’s. Two young lovers that had been so full of life. Tired, but happy. No one, especially not May could have ever predicted their fate. Life was cruel that way. Sitting on the floor, cooing at Peter while the other Parkers sat and laughed around them, she never thought that one day they would be the only ones left. 

And until the day that she had seen Spider-Man standing in her nephew’s bedroom, she had definitely never thought that she would be alone.  
And despite the tragedy her family faced, Peter had always been a blessing. He was kind to a fault and managed to live a happy and healthy life, despite his bad luck. But today, as May pushed away thoughts of her nephew in a war, thoughts of her nephew broken and bleeding and crying for help, she cannot help but to hate everything about her boy that makes her love him so much.

She knows that she should be proud of him. Knows that she will be. But today all she can do is wish that her boy was a little more selfish, a little less sacrificial. She hates how much like Ben he is, always doing the right thing, always looking out for the little guy. She hates that he would sacrifice his life to save anyone, whether a murderer or a stranger. While she had always felt so lucky to have a sweet, caring, well-behaved boy in her home for years, in that moment she swore she would trade it all for a Peter that was a little more selfish, a little more mean.

Because this- this feeling of absence and fear was the worst possible thing that could happen to a mother. Knowing that your young son, a foolish teenage boy who didn’t think things through, was in the thick of a universal catastrophe was the absolute worst thing that May had ever had to deal with. It was the knowing, and the inability to do anything. She was the mother, the person who was supposed to protect her child, but she was helpless to the wrath of Thanos and aliens. How do you protect a hero?

So she sat in her apartment, alone, knowing that her only family left was going through something traumatizing and terrifying. But there was nothing she could do, except wring her hands pace back and forth. The news was turned on, volume on high so that May could hear it clearly from any room in the apartment.  
My poor baby. My poor baby, she thought as she watched news anchors stumble through their words, trying to find an explanation for the events that they were seeing and failing. Peter was somewhere out there. And she knew that the young, baby-faced boy that had run away to Tony Stark was not the boy that would return home. 

When her tears eventually ran out and she could no longer sit in front of the TV, May began to prepare for Peter’s return home. Because Peter would return home, there was no doubt in her mind because to think of anything else would be impossible, it was inconceivable, it would destroy her, and it would not happen.  
Refusing to feel useless, May put her nervous energy to work. She spent all night cleaning and preparing the apartment for Peter’s return. She stripped his sheets and washed them, plumped his pillows and made a cozy nest for him, because he was going to be tired. She prepared dinner, heaps of spaghetti with lots of vegetables and chicken, because he was going to be hungry. She made his favorite dessert, a chocolate cake that she hadn’t made in years after watching a documentary on how sugar and butter could destroy one’s health, because he just saved the world and deserved to be spoiled. She sprayed an aromatherapy fragrance that was supposed to help you relax in every room, because she didn’t know how else to help him, how else to make him feel safe. 

If she couldn’t help Peter out there, she made damn well sure that she would help him in anyway that she could. That boy wasn’t made for this world. He was too gentle and loving and sweet. He had lost almost everyone he had ever loved, yet never became bitter or angry. He took his pain and used it to prevent others from ever feeling the same way. He stopped muggers and bank robbers in the shadows of the night. He saved countless lives so that one less person would have to suffer the pain of losing a loved one. 

While he protected the citizens of the world, there was no one but her to protect him. His grandparents, Mary and Richard, Ben-- they were all gone, counting on May to take care of him. As she waited, alone, for her boy to come home she promised that he would have everything he needed. She was going to make him feel safe, make him feel loved and whole again. Because when Peter finally came home, he was going to need his Aunt.


End file.
